One, and
Nahoon went mad with grief at the sight of it, for the fire of Heaven
entered his brain, and mad he has wandered ever since."

"What would you here, Nahoon-ka-Zomba?" asked the Induna.

Then Nahoon spoke slowly. "My regiment goes down to war against the
white men; give me a shield and a spear, O Captain of the king, that I
may fight with my regiment, for I seek a face in the battle."

So they gave him a shield and a spear, for they dared not turn away one
whose brain was alight with the fire of Heaven.

*****

When the sun was high that day, bullets began to fall among the ranks
of the Umcityu. Then the black-shielded, black-plumed Umcityu arose,
company by company, and after them arose the whole vast Zulu army,
breast and horns together, and swept down in silence upon the doomed
British camp, a moving sheen of spears. The bullets pattered on the
shields, the shells tore long lines through their array, but they never
halted or wavered. Forward on either side shot out the horns of armed
men, clasping the camp in an embrace of steel. Then as these began
to close, out burst the war cry of the Zulus, and with the roar of a
torrent and the rush of a storm, with a sound like the humming of a
billion bees, wave after wave the deep breast of the _impi_ rolled down
upon the white men. With it went the black-shielded Umcityu and with
them went Nahoon, the son of Zomba. A bullet struck him in the side,
glancing from his ribs, he did not heed; a white man fell from his horse
before him, he did not stab, for he sought but one face in the battle.

He sought--and at last he found. There, among the waggons where the
spears were busiest, there standing by his horse and firing rapidly
was Black Heart, he who had given Nanea his betrothed to death. Three
soldiers stood between them, one of them Nahoon stabbed, and two he
brushed aside; then he rushed straight at Hadden.

But the white man saw him come, and even through the mask of his madness
he knew Nahoon again, and terror took hold of him. Throwing away his
empty rifle, for his ammunition was spent, he leaped upon his horse
and drove his spurs into its flanks. Away it went among the carnage,
springing over the dead and bursting through the lines of shields, and
after it came Nahoon, running long and low with head stretched forward
and trailing spear, running as a hound runs when the buck is at view.

Hadden's first plan was to head for Rorke's Drift, but a glance to t